I think its a little bit ironic to talk about being more comfortable eating 'happy' meat as a happy animal surely wants to live more than a miserable one who is badly treated. If you eat the 'miserable' meat you can surely rest assured that you were part of putting a badly treated animal out of its misery rather than extend its horrible life.

I think this really misses the point i'm afraid Maddy. The point about animals that are reared for meat is that their life, as short as it can be, is as a source of food. There is no worldly purpose for us to breed millions of pigs a year if it were not for it's ability to provide me with a perfect slow roast shoulder of Pork or a cracking Cumberland sausage butty. Without me enjoying his flesh, the animal does not get to have a life, it does not even get that one shot at this game that you and I enjoy.

So if you are going to moralise the argument is this fashion, you need to ask yourself a question first. Regardless of whether an individual is prepared to kill the beast himself or not, is it more moral to deny an animal a chance at life at all than it is to provide him a happy, free-range if relatively short life in the course of providing food for us?

I probably shouldn't even mention how many innocent animals would have to die if we all became vegetarians/vegans and we tore up millions of fields, hedges and tree to plant the crops we'd need to feed the whole world vegan/vegetarian produce.....

I thought one of the problems with our meat-eating world is that so much good land is given up to growing feed for animals. I'm not sure how this squares with having to tear up fields, hedges and trees to plant more crops. We have more than enough being used for agriculture already.

Silly billy there are millions of cats and dogs, small rodents plus other types of just the sort of livestock we are talking about that are kept as pets as an interest and they tend to live healthier lives. And dogs and cats are food in some countries.

I haven't said you shouldn't enjoy your meat I merely suggested that people should take responsibility - if can rear an animal dail, feed it care for it and then kill it for food - fair play

As for tearing up fileds - It takes 10% landtake to feed a veggie than a modern day omnivore so there would still be plenty of land to go around to feed livestock running truely free

But aside from the animals we need for dairy and eggs (for the veggies) we wouldn't need much land for livestock. People wouldn't keep them for the hell of it, by and large.

This isn't about keeping pets though, is it? it's about a fair deal between humans and the animals we eat. They get a short, happy life that they wouldn't otherwise have. We get a meal. I struggle to see anything ethically wrong with that whatsoever.

I thought one of the problems with our meat-eating world is that so much good land is given up to growing feed for animals. I'm not sure how this squares with having to tear up fields, hedges and trees to plant more crops. We have more than enough being used for agriculture already.

Animals still die when you replace it's natural habitat with a ploughed field to grow veg. Right?

I think its a little bit ironic to talk about being more comfortable eating 'happy' meat as a happy animal surely wants to live more than a miserable one who is badly treated. If you eat the 'miserable' meat you can surely rest assured that you were part of putting a badly treated animal out of its misery rather than extend its horrible life.

I think your logic is flawed. You're saying that morally it makes more sense to end the life of a currently existing miserable animal than a currently existing happy animal. But this has nothing to do with the consumer choosing to eat meat which has come from an animal that was better treated. If everyone en masse chose to eat the miserable animals and not the happy animals, more miserable animals would be bred in the first place and fewer happy animals would be bred.

As SB says, you're dealing with the life of an animal that otherwise wouldn't have existed if it weren't for the purpose of producing meat.

And many livestock animals exist for purposes other than food and milk and wool - I mean they keep the grass nice and short on plenty of lumpy areas we just don't recognise that very often because it doesn't affect our daily lives

The miserable lifestyles exist because enmasse people have stuck their head in the sand about where their food comes from for years and there is alot more about food safety tied up in this than many people like to admit - taking responsibilty means accepting that most of us have been part of that in some way

I thought one of the problems with our meat-eating world is that so much good land is given up to growing feed for animals. I'm not sure how this squares with having to tear up fields, hedges and trees to plant more crops. We have more than enough being used for agriculture already.

Animals still die when you replace it's natural habitat with a ploughed field to grow veg. Right?

Yes but less meat consumtion would free up moire land to be returned to natural habitat for animals

Hey, really enjoying this thread and am sharing in a lot of your feelings in the eating-meat-and-if-so-what-type debate. I am a pretty fussy eater and don’t really like the taste of any meat apart from poultry and fish (mince hidden in chilli and steak in stews but mainly because you can’t really taste it). I try to buy local and free range if I can find it but always free range over anything else. My main problem is fish. Where possible I buy wild fish (salmon comes to mind) but my real problem comes because whenever I think about where fish has come from I just get an image of a load of fish writhing and essentially slowly suffocating in a net or on the deck of a ship. I know it is perhaps a little silly but does anyone else feel this way and what do you do to resolve yourself?

Just because an animal appears to be stressed doesnt necessarily mean it's miserable all the time.

You might be right but it's a reasonable indication isn't it? Maybe we could condense the argument to stressed vs un-stressed animals but either way, the argument requires the same necessary interrogation.

I don't think getting too bogged down in proving happiness or otherwise helps the discussion too much. It seems clear to me that keeping chickens in small gates with a thousand other chickens pecking lumps out of each other is not preferable to a much smaller number of chickens in a much larger area, running around and having a much more full existance. I'm sure, if we could ask a chicken, he'd probably agree.

i complained to tesco recently. i couldn't believe they were still using eggs from caged hens.

Their defence was that it wasn't illegal as they are using EU-approved 'enhanced cages'. ive seen the cages (it was working on a farm with battery hens that made me veggie in the first place) and I could see first hand how their lives would be enhanced.

This is the trouble where we take our moral lead from what is legal and what is not. Companies/indivduals have to make their own choices and cannot use the law as moral justification.

of course, and I did. i haven't noticed much of a dent in tesco's profits yet, and i'm sure they aren't alone.

It comes down to smart marketing. Enhanced cages, etc. I remember in the 90s when protecting the ozone was fashionable, a brand of detergent was labelled 'phosphate free'. until someone pointed out that it had never had any phosphates anyway.

most shoppers now look for free range, and 'technically' they might be, within the letter of the law. but in most cases they aren't. but they make people sleep well.

dude - Why dont you get yourself some ex batteries and an iglo and you can have fresh eggs most days. We did and ours live in complete luxury, they eat better than me some days and get to wander around the garden all day every day, what could be better

Indeed, they can be most amusing creatures. We are down to 2 so looking to get 2 more directly from Omlet - i think we are getting a Miss Pepperpot and a Gingernut Ranger They are meant to lay over 300 eggs per year so b0ll0x to Tesco et all

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